


Persephone Ascending

by tzzzz



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ancient Technology, Body Horror, Gender Issues, Genderfuck, Intersex, Kid Fic, M/M, Mpreg, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:07:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzzzz/pseuds/tzzzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>But surely they cannot be the same thing: the preservation of the body and the preservation of the soul.</i> This is John, reborn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persephone Ascending

John makes high little squeaking noises when he's getting fucked, kind of like the female characters in Japanese anime porn. It shouldn't turn Rodney on, but it does.  
  
They've been dancing around this for so long, he's not sure he remembers what it is to not have a little space carved out of his heart, waiting for John Sheppard. The remainder hadn't been enough for Katie, and now that he has John, this full, overwhelming feeling welling up in Rodney's chest seems to indicate that he hasn't saved even close to enough.  
  
It's the worst kind of cliche, but he says, "I love you," when he comes.  
  
John doesn't say anything.  
  
  
  
_Private Journal, Octavius Iluminus, Sun 5, Moon 6, Orbit 9337_  
  
The priests say that once every member of society is provided for to satisfaction, the only spiritual progress is in the continuation of life. Biological historians remind us that to search for the life eternal is the only rule written into the nature of all organisms.  
  
But surely they cannot be the same thing: the preservation of the body and the preservation of the soul.  
  
  
  
There's so much blood: too much. Ronon is drenched in it, like he stayed outside in a rust colored rain. On Rodney, it's just his hands that seem to bleed.  
  
Keller's not like Carson, who, like Cassandra, wrote whole essays on the future in his eyes, in the wrinkles on his face. All Rodney sees in her is determination, not prognosis.  
  
Instead, it's written by Carter's sympathetic smile, Teyla's small hand clasped in his, the way Ronon paces, as though motion and grief move in tandem. John will not survive, and yet they stay and watch and hope.  
  
It speaks to their desperation that when the pod suddenly shoots out of the wall of the operating theater, open like the gaping maw of a waiting beast, Jennifer does not pause to consult or research or even read the words scrawled eloquently across its top in Ancient.  
  
She gives it John and he slips into the mouth of Cerberus without a sound.  
  
  
  
_Sun 7, Moon 9, Orbit 9339_  
  
On Persephone's birthday, I mark the day of her death. The priests let me change that date, for even now they are building a grand mythology around her - how her life, like that off the sun, might be lived in cycles, each death a new rebirth.   
  
I wish they would also let me change her name, for no one returns from the land of the dead the same as they once were.  
  
  
  
The days of waiting, staring forlornly at the opaque lid of the stasis chamber, seep the life from Rodney, as though, like the years taken by the Wraith, it must remain in balance.   
  
He's done the research on what the chamber does. It is a measure of last resort, though nobody yet knows why, if it could heal a broken body so completely. It is not addictive, like the sarcophagus or the Gift of Life given by a Wraith.   
  
But through long hours staring at the smooth material of its carapace and the simple silver engraving, Rodney thinks he knows its price. Nanites whir within, like a million little insects. They placed John in the right chamber, and Rodney has no doubt that they will remove him on the left, rebuilt from all that he once was, according to the plans in his DNA.  
  
There is an old riddle about a ship. Through long years facing the elements, every board, every nail and screw and rope, has been replaced. The form remains the same, the crew indifferent. It sails beneath the same name, owned by the same man, but is it the same ship?  
  
Rodney doesn't know. But he understand the inscription and what it means: Persephone was here.  
  
The question is: did she stay?  
  
  
  
_Sun 6, Moon 13, Orbit 9337_  
  
She looked like a goddess, coming to wake from her long sleep. I wanted to touch every inch of virgin skin and run my lips over the fine hairs of her belly, her upper lip, the inside of her wrist, so downy soft and fragile as a newborn.   
  
But then she opened her eyes and was no longer there.  
  
  
  
What Rodney sees when the stasis pod finally opens drains the breath from his body as well as any crushing impact might have. It is obviously John from the familiar nose to the unruly black hair, the high cheekbones and the long jaw line.  
  
What is not John is the supple curve a his hips, the soft white tissue of his breasts, the way those high cheekbones and almost too beautiful features suddenly make _sense_.  
  
But then John's eyes fly open, and he gasps, rocketing up and grasping at his stomach where the blood used to be.  
  
"Rodney?" he says in an unfamiliar voice, reaching out. "Ronon? Teyla? What happened?"   
  
"They're fine. We're all fine." Rodney's not sure if he means it.  
  
  
  
_Sun 21, Moon 13, 9337_  
  
Persephone claims to not remember death, but as I sit out here in the study, while she dozes contentedly in our bed, I can't help but think her a liar. If she did not hear some whispers of that to come, then what has changed?  
  
Unless I am the one who changed, in that one instant when I glimpsed her death.  
  
  
  
"I was going to tell you," John says, curled up with his strangely delicate toes peaking out from beneath Rodney's fleece, where he has it tucked over his folded legs. "I usually like to let people know before we sleep together. I just wanted you so bad;y. I couldn't risk you saying no."  
  
"Why would I have said no? Do you think I would have cared?"  
  
John rests his chin on his knees, fixing Rodney with an earnest stare. "You seem to care now."  
  
They haven't had sex again. And rightfully, so. "You just came back from the dead, a _girl_. Excuse me if I want to wait for the gender diaspora to settle before I risk screwing up the best thing that I've ever even had a chance at."  
  
John's smile softens, and he pulls himself to his feet, still tall and slinky as ever. "How can you say something so romantic and not want to ravish me right here?" He tries to rest a hand demurely on his breast like he might've seen on the cover of a magazine, but in Rodney's bright orange fleece, the seductive look just isn't achievable.  
  
"Do lines straight out of harlequin romances always work for you, Colonel? Or is this a new thing?"  
  
John shrugs, looking disappointed. "I can't go back. Keller says that the machine fixed all the hormone problems that cause me to androgenize in the first place. But, I can get surgery. If you don't like this body, maybe we can reprogram the machine to--"  
  
"You like it, though?"  
  
John pauses. "I don't know. Biologically, I've always been female. I thought that maybe that's why I liked to bottom so much. I need to think about it."  
  
"Okay, then."  
  
His lips are softer now, and full, sweet tasting against Rodney's own. The body is delicate as he spreads it out beneath him, without the coiled sense of power Rodney so enjoyed before. John doesn't tumble around with him, like their few times as men, grappling for control. Instead, he lays back and spreads his legs wide, whimpering into Rodney's mouth like this is what he always wanted.  
  
  
  
_Sun 29, Moon 2, 9338_  
  
I often feel like Commander Orpheus while he waited at the docks of Armadean, tense and breathless for his fleet to return to the beacon he sent out for them into the void.  
  
Persephone is the ship that I am waiting for, but her presence haunts me until I fear that this sense of waiting will consume. I am reminded that despite all our devices that may speed or slow events in relation to the passage of time for others, there is not yet a device that can speed our own perception and skip us to a point in our own lives beyond the now.  
  
  
  
John is beloved beyond flesh and bone. It was never physical prowess that made him a hero, as skinny and fragile looking as he always was. No, it is the strength of his resolve that makes his powerful, the way those beneath his command know without a doubt that he would give his life to protect theirs.   
  
That has not changed. But other things have.  
  
His movements, once so clumsy, if still effective, have taken on a supple feminine grace that mirrors Teyla's. A crowd forms now to watch them spar, like two beautiful dancers flowing perfectly from one movement to the next.  
  
Off world, his smiles are lauded more than even before as councilmen and headman and village elder alike all try to win his favor. But, unlike the awkward bashful smiles and the horrible pick up lines from before, he returns their affections with a cordial flirtation and a calculated flush.   
  
John Sheppard has always been meant to be adored, Rodney thinks, more jealous than he can stand. But it's Rodney that John returns to, night after night. He buries himself in Rodney's heat and tells him all the secrets he once kept so guarded.  
  
  
  
_Sun 17, Moon 3, 9338_  
  
In all of the mourning I have done for her, it was easy to overlook the mourning that Persephone herself has undergone.  
  
It's not mourning for her old life, that which was, or for the scars that no longer show themselves on her body. In the stream of her consciousness, there is not great demarcation. There cannot be. She fell asleep dying and woke alive.   
  
Instead she mourns the life that had been growing inside her. Snuffed out by the directive of the machine.  
  
  
"I'm pregnant," John says, wiping the bile from his lips with a cool washcloth.  
  
"What? But we've been careful. We always used protection!" Rodney is too floored by the revelation to wonder how the old John might of have said it. Angry, probably, not with a trace of this calm resignation.  
  
"Not before, when I was a man." That's the first time Rodney's heard him make reference to it, or acknowledge the difference in any way.  
  
"Well, when you were a man, I didn't put my dick anywhere near your uterus, if you even had one!"  
  
"Keller says there was a directive in the program, to preserve all life growing in the body, something about the first test subject losing her baby when she was healed. I didn't have time to shower before the mission, so I guess the nanites picked up some swimmers and didn't know exactly what to do with them."  
  
Rodney collapses back onto the bathroom floor then, looking up a John. She still likes to shoot things, but she likes playing with kids more. She's neater, though her taste in clothes hasn't changed. She's beautiful, but no longer handsome, and even though she's carrying Rodney's child, Rodney wonders if he's still in love with her.  
  
"Um, so, what do we do? I mean, are you going to," he gestures vaguely in the direction of John's perfectly smooth belly.  
  
"I'm going to keep it, Rodney. Of course. I always wanted kids, you know? I had talked about it with Nancy, but she dragged her heals about the whole sperm bank thing. It was the right decision. We wouldn't have lasted. But, with you. I love you, Rodney. Of course I want to have a child with you."  
  
Rodney wants to snap. John, the old one, never would have let so much emotion slip. They would have talked about Wormhole Xtreme and the stupid Virgin Mary of Satan thing they pulled in their last season, about Deep Space Nine and Kira as a surrogate, and in their own secret language, they would have said it all.  
  
"Okay," Rodney gulps, because there's never been a time when he could deny John something he's wanted enough to ask for.  
  
"Are you mad?" John asks, cocking her head. "I still want the baby. But you don't have to--" There are tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Even when the Wraith was sucking the life out of him, John had never cried.  
  
"No," Rodney pulls her to him. She's so delicate and John would never have let Rodney be the protector like this. "No, I'm not mad. Just surprised. I mean, there's plans to make. Baby blankets, and mobiles, and diapers, and everything to order. We have to see Keller. You need to find someone else to head up the team for a while. Change your papers. Talk about it with the SGC--"  
  
John has frozen, pushing herself up to look Rodney in the eyes. "I didn't want to do this so soon, but I should have known that you'd want to, you know, take care of things, even though we have six months."  
  
"What? What is it?"  
  
"I want to go back to Earth. I, um, I don't think Atlantis is a place for children, what with the Wraith and all."  
  
"But everyone else in this galaxy still has kids! Atlantis is your home."  
  
John shakes her head. "Every mother wants what's best for her children, Rodney."  
  
"But you-- You can't just go! What about the expedition? They need you. And they certainly need me!"  
  
John shakes her head. "I'm just a gene with an officer attached, Rodney. Now that Dr. Yee has improved on the gene therapy and the IOA has started service-wide testing for ATA, I'm no longer necessary."  
  
"But what about all the times you've saved our collective asses? Your harebrained schemes and your ridiculous luck?! It's not your gene we need; it's you."  
  
John nods, biting her lip. "That means you're staying, doesn't it?"  
  
By Rodney's own reasoning, he's just as important. And his reasoning is never (or rarely) wrong. He could go back to Earth. He'd promised John that if they were ever found out, he would. But that was different. In a world where John got the boot under DADT, Rodney's leaving would serve as a sort of strike that would force the military to let them both stay. No amount of striking on his part would bring John back from this.   
  
"I want you to stay with me."  
  
"And I want you to raise a child with me," John replies, a hint of his old mulishness shining through, the expectant raise of the eyebrows exactly the same.  
  
"Yes, yes, and if wishes were horses--"  
  
"We're ride off into the sunset."  
  
  
  
_Sun 11, Moon 6, Orbit 3341_  
  
These are strange times. Many have been healed with my device, since Persephone, but we are on the brink of something much greater. It is one thing to construct a body as we construct a machine, assembled of its base components and nothing more. What the monks are now achieving is something different entirely, it is the melding of matter and energy and consciousness, and soon so many among us will possess this holy gift of ascension that my twisted creation with become unnecessary.  
  
Persephone visited the priest today and I think he saw something of death in her, for she returns to me once again, reborn. She may claim to have seen nothing of death, but she has brushed up against eternity, of that I have no doubt. Perhaps, I stole her away from it when I pulled her from the jaws of death, and what she mourns is a soul already intertwined with the gods of the next plane.  
  
  
  
The house is at the end of a long lane, farms with horses on either side and maple trees losing their leaves all over the rain slicked curve of the pavement. It's green shutters and white New England style wood paneling are far from anything Rodney would have expected. There are three cars in the driveway, though the sleek silver Prosche is the only one that Rodney can see John driving.  
  
He knows that he's dropping in unannounced when he pushes open the door, but he's as surprised to hear the peel of laughter drifting in from the family room as he is to see the maid at the door. Thank god, she seems to recognize him, letting him pass right through.  
  
John is sitting cross-legged on the plush carpeting, holding out her hands to a boy with curly blond hair and blue eyes, looking even more like his father than in the photographs. He takes a single step before face planting almost into John's bosom.  
  
There's another man there, with John's eyes, but perfectly coifed hair and a strong chin. Rodney recognizes him from the hospital: John's brother, Dave. He's chuckling at little Bruce's antics, holding a solemn little girl on his lap easily.  
  
Rodney's just drinking in this scene of heartbreaking domesticity when John raises her eyes, her face lighting up as she grabs Bruce and practically leaps into Rodney's arms like this is a very backwards version of An Officer and a Gentleman.  
  
"Hey, watch the kid!" Rodney squawks, "We'd like to keep him from spilling his genius brains before the age when he can come up with a theory of unification, please."  
  
John breathes him in, a wide smile on her face, and Bruce reaches out to grab Rodney's nose in greeting. He never saw the old John like this, truly and unrepentantly happy. Even when flying, he never showed this much and Rodney is helpless to do anything but cup her cheek and press his mouth to hers.  
  
"In case the eyes didn't give it away, he's definitely your son," John says. "He likes Star Trek better than Star Wars. He laughs every time he sees Q."   
  
"You can't show that stuff to a baby! You'll scar him for life!"  
  
John rolls her eyes. "He's not old enough to be scared. Not even by Robbie the Robot."  
  
"Hey, that was a scary movie! I couldn't sleep for months."  
  
John's reply cracks into a huge smile. "I missed you."  
  
And once again, Rodney is reminded of all the ways John's changed. "I missed you, too." He still does.


End file.
